‘TYP­I­CAL HERO ROLES ARE GONE’

Ar­baaz Khan is in a happy space in his ca­reer. He has pro­duced three films — Dabangg (2010), Dabangg 2 (2012) , Dolly Ki Doli (2014) and is gear­ing up for his fourth, which is the third in­stal­ment of the Dabangg fran­chise.

In the last three years, he has been keep­ing busy with his act­ing projects as well — Kis Kisko Pyaar Ka­roon (2015), Freaky Ali, Yea Toh Two Much Ho Gayaa (2016), Jeena Isi Ka Naam Hai (2017), Tera In­tezaar (2017) and Nir­dosh, which re­leased in Jan­uary. And Ar­baaz at­tributes this in­crease in op­por­tu­ni­ties for him to the “change” in Hindi cin­ema.

“The typ­i­cal ro­man­tic hero roles are pretty much gone. The main­stream cin­ema is chang­ing; now char­ac­ters with var­i­ous per­son­al­i­ties, and grey shades are seen,” he says.

Ar­baaz says it was not a con­scious de­ci­sion, but he has been for­tu­nate that peo­ple have been cast­ing him in dif­fer­ent roles. “Be­tween 2010 and 2014, I was con­cen­trat­ing on my pro­duc­tion. I did three films. That took my time and my con­cen­tra­tion. I had to put my act­ing ca­reer on the back­burner,” he says.

Even though some of his films haven’t done well, Ar­baaz is not de­terred. “It does not mat­ter be­cause as an ac­tor I need to grow and ex­plore. I look for in­ter­est­ing stuff and I leave it at that,” he says.

Pre­vi­ously, it was just ro­man­tic ac­tors, ac­tion stars, com­edy ac­tors or vil­lains. Slot­ting does not hap­pen any­more. The lines have blurred.

AR­BAAZ KHAN AC­TOR­FILM­MAKER

PHOTO: SHIVAM SAXENA/HT

This year in Jan­uary, Ar­baaz Khan was seen play­ing a cop in a sus­pense thriller, Nir­dosh